


FRIENDFICTION

by oxfordRoulette



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Choose Your Own Adventure, Dark Humor, Experimental, Fix-It, Heartbreak, Metanarrative Gaming, Mind Control, Other, Post-Canon, Pre-Epilogue, Suicidal Ideation, The Homestuck Epilogues, dating sim, epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: The plot chugs along in your peripheral mind like a steam train. Your splinters slot together like a well-oiled machine and form the Grander You. You feel the post-canon, irrelevant narrative click and grind along without your intervention, waiting for a conductor to wrest control. You’re not ready to drive it quite yet.First, you need some practice.(a choose your own adventure fix-it fic. all pairings optional [and not necessarily romantic/sexual], the tags, rating, and endings change depending on what route you go down.)





	1. DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I'm D-List Homestuck Fandom Celebrity oxfordroulette, creator of such infamous works you enjoyed but have almost certainly forgotten including: that one fic where jade rides a motorcycle, THE dirkjohn au, that fic that's basically just 120k words of deranged House of Leaves dirkjake porn that you clicked on for the concept and then went 'nah' and never actually read, and every single certified fucking masterpiece the 2014 HSWC SBAHJ team put out. Boy howdy, what a resume.
> 
> You may notice that this fic is unrated! That’s because this is essentially an elaborate a dating sim, and the rating and tags will be dependent on which route Dirk decides to go down. You’ll be informed of what you’re reading when the time comes.
> 
> All the tags listed uptop at the moment are indeed unskippable. Yup, including that suicidal one. Poor guy. You see, Dirk is currently in the midst of a...

You sit in a bar inside Jane’s sprawling McMansion, your forehead firmly pressed to the mahogany counter.

You’ve long since made your escape from the party upstairs, retreating to a place where no one would ever think to look for you. It’s the perfect ruse: a bar. Although you may be twenty one, you’ve never had a drop of alcohol in your life, and everyone knows it. You can’t stand the stuff.

It’s one of three bars Jane has in her basement, and the one that sees the least use. It’s themed after seedy 1970s pool dives, for some fucking reason. Brown shag carpet walls, tacky beer-themed stained glass lighting, broken jukebox in the back corner, and a pool table in the center. You’ve really got to hire her a new interior decorator, if you ever get it together.

Your only company is the carapacian bartender, whom you’re pretty sure she keeps locked in here. The little chess dude seems happy in front of the liquor bottle spread, busy shining a whiskey glass, on repeat, ad infinitum. Good for him.

The red pleather stool hurts your ass. There’s smooth R&B playing, from a record player two rooms away. The counter smells like polished veneer and imported whiskey. The multicolored lights cast orange and green disco-ball shadows across your crumpled body.

All in all, an appropriate venue for your upcoming breakdown.

Your life is in utter shambles. This is, as per usual, entirely your fault. First, there was your horribly embarrassing failure of a love confession. Then, you refused to talk to your friends about it. Then you refused to talk to your friends about _anything._ Why plague them with your existence when the only guy you've ever opened up to never once looked at you the way he looks at his airheaded groupies? You were clearly not even worth the time of day.

You started keeping yourself company the only way you knew how: by building more versions of yourself to dunk on. Less literal than the AR this time, although your AR is indeed one of the splinters now living in your mind. You felt your Ultimate Self breaking through the cracks and accepted it with full force. You've begun to absorb all the Dirks you can, purely out of self-spite and loneliness.

It's not like you went in blind; you planned for it. Prepared yourself. And you could have handled it, honestly. You could have handled shitty memories of being a computer, of dying a million times, of beating Dave to a pulp. You knew you'd go a little stir crazy with all those alt-Dirks running around in your brain, but you didn't think you would be plunged into such a Dark Night. You didn't think one of your selves would be a self-aware, cueball headed puppet who alerted you to the existence of that fucking Machine. The Machine chugging along just offstage, a presence you've always felt but never noticed until it was pointed out to you.

That Machine is your dark night of the soul. Your Noche Oscura. What's getting to you, what's _really_ pushing you off the cliffs of insanity, is all the fucking gears whirring in your head. The narrative. The theming. The goddamn plot. The realization that you are a pointless story. A piece of fucking fiction. That your friends are characters, that their imperfect cracks show through. That you are doomed to rot in a post-canon hell, forever and ever.

You intended to stay at the bar all night and mope over this. Staring at the wood and asking the big questions to yourself like: What's the point of it all? Why bother? It won't matter if you kill yourself, because you're just a fucking character, right? And it won't matter if you hurt your friends, will it? They're just made-up fakey nobodies. Is there an afterlife for fictional characters? Christ, you hope not.

But you can't mope over it. Your plans have been ruined already.

You see, you're too busy fuming over how this narrator isn't doing a very good job of capturing your voice.

You think she's been writing over-complicated OOC AUs for too long. This narration is way too generic and high-level for Dirk fucking Strider. It's too... _direct._ Your feelings need to be masked by ten levels of irony, jokes, and murky bullshit, not slammed out there in the open for people to actually understand. If somebody understands your character, then this narrative has already failed at a base level. You really don't need anyone but yourself to mess your characterization up even further, but well, guess we're doing this shit.

You have a feeling that, from her track record, she's going to lay down some humorous ultra-darkfic ironic Strider Manpain and go absolutely buckwild on the sex scenes, but you can't predict this for certain. You should probably take over the narration before she does anything _too_ weird with you. You feel the the threads of the story vibrating at the edges of your brain like someone's strumming a guitar string. All you have to do is reach out and pluck one.

But you haven’t made the attempt yet. You don’t want to try for narrative dominance until you’re certain you’ve got it down to an art. There’s too many unknown variables in the situation: how first person works, how many characters can you puppet at a time, how do periphery objects react to your monologues, how can you emulate someone’s ‘voice’ so they’re not clued into the fact you’re altering their desires. You think you can handle the first three items on the fly, but you currently suck ass at that last thing.

You refuse to wrest control of the story at the moment, so you grit your teeth and try to force yourself away from the constant clicking and grinding of the (totally not generic and Definitely Dirk-Like, _thanks)_ narrative in your head. You fail spectacularly. Ugh, god… There’s just… so many italics…

The carapacian sets a glass down in front of you with a loud thunk. You lift your head, weary, and observe two fingers of neat whiskey, poured just for you. You adjust your shades, and sit up to examine it.

You can’t say you’re not tempted. On one hand, maybe getting drunk will drown out this stupid second person voice prattling on and on in your head, and then you can finally get on with moping about the universe and meaning and stuff. On the other, you have no practical experience with drinking in this particular Dirk-body, so you might not want to risk it. In fact, why the fuck are you still here? You’re pretty sure nobody’s ever going to come looking for you. You’ve got better places to have existential crises.

Seems like a trivial choice. But you know there are no inconsequential choices in Paradox Space or its extended universe. So, what’ll it be? 

> [DRINK](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#workskin)  
> [LEAVE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260456#workskin)


	2. MEAT ME IN THE BACK

This was definitely the right choice. A swift and merciful end to a shitty fic. Time to step out. You make a quick escape from Jane’s mansion and...

You know FRIENDFICTION was intended to be multi-chapter, but you're ready to make this fic a oneshot.

Why waste time fucking around in some horny lunatic’s story on AO3? USELESS. PORNOGRAPHIC DRIVEL, you think. Irrelevant, you think. This has nothing to do with continuing you and your friends' existences at all-- it's set pre-epilogue, for fuck's sake, you already know you'll maintain relevancy until at least that point. And besides, how the hell can it be a fix-it fic if it happens before whatever the fuck it’s trying to fix? It’s not even fucking canon, it can’t fix anything.

However, _Dirk,_ I think you'd change your mind if you understood this particular Machine's purpose.

Whatever. You've already made your choice. There's no happy ending for you. You've decided you're either going to create meaning in a deadend existence or die trying, and ain't no fanfic gonna get in the way of that. You will become an emotionless construct. A plot device. Unlock the anime villain scribed deep into your soul. You don't need to connect, not when the only people to connect to are underdeveloped characters in a story. All you need is logic, an outline, and your schemes.

You leave the party, and will never have a real conversation with anyone for years.

And in your loneliness, you will give into your splinters, your darkness, your most powerful persona. And the sickest part? You'll enjoy every minute of it. You will despise yourself for enjoying it. You have always, always wanted to be the manipulative puppet master, but could never free your mind until now. You will become both your worst nightmare and your best self, the ventriloquist coded into your character since day fucking one whom you so deeply feared to let grow.

[But that's a whole different fanfiction.](https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/prologue)

.

.

> [<== Go Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260441#workskin)


	3. THIS WICKED HOUSE

You drink it down. It tastes like literal shit, and the bartender helpfully pours you a club soda when you spit-choke out your first gulp. If this guy wasn’t a bit part in a useless narrative, you might have felt embarrassed.

You remember some splinter of yourself reading somewhere that it was hard to get drunk your first go-around. All the Dirks that _have_ imbibed before are all so fucking tangential to you that you can’t dredge up the experience to confirm. You calculate your ideal BMI-to-number-of-drinks ratio and corroborate it with stats from the Internet, and figure you should down two more of these glasses for peak tipsy.

You do so. It doesn’t taste any better.

You sit and wait for the supposed wooziness of drunken freedom to take you over. And it comes, but it doesn’t help much with your narrator problem. You can still hear the gears working, the story turning along with you. The whiskey didn’t do what you wanted. All it did was lower your inhibitions enough for you to be swayed by the author's intent.

You get to thinking. Maybe you should practice this whole “being a narrator” shtick. So what if you’re not fully prepared, so what if you haven’t established full psychological profiles on every character so you can imitate their voice? Practice makes perfect, after all, and how are you going to kick the story into high gear if you don’t know what you’re doing?

Might as well start with your friends, since you theoretically know them better than everyone else on this post-canon earth, and they're also more fleshed out than, say, this carapacian dude right here. Sounds like a plan to you. You like plans.

And so,

You climb the dank, dark stairs up and away from the basement bar. You can still walk in a straight line, although you’re feeling a bit woozy. You try to think of everyone who is attending Jane’s “Crockercorp Finally Owns Every Single One Of The Fortune 500 Companies” bash.

Let’s see… There’s Rose, Roxy, Jane, and, ugh, _Jake._

During a rare moment of complete and utter vulnerability, you made an absolute idiot of yourself by confessing your love to fine-assed moron of the century Jake English. You were met with rejection. It was obvious in retrospect. You knew he was an idiot, but you didn’t know he could have won first place at the Darwin Awards for all twenty one of his short lived years. You thought there was a hidden depth to him, a character beneath that sexy facade. From your brief exploration into his inner monologue, it turns out he’s more like a wading pool.

But let’s be real. You’re still addicted to the guy. When you look at him, your heart palpates, your skin develops a light sheen, your dick twitches like it’s been tazed. You know deep inside your black heart that there’s still room hollowed out for your old flaaaaAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIII can’t take this anymore. How does anybody even function with this B-grade nonsense droning on and on?

I’ve had enough. I’ve got the ability and wherewithal to take control, so why limit myself? I’ve got my learners permit, daddy’s metaphorical car, and I’m set to get a DUI. We’re taking the training wheels off. Car’s waxed and polished. I’m ready to _drive._

But something still feels wrong. I think the layout is the problem. The presentation. Let’s get rid of these unprofessional double-spaced paragraphs. Change the font around. Give it that personal Strider magic.

Now we’re cooking with gas.

I’m digging this. I was born and bred to monologue at a giant monstrous plot machine. I’ve been flexing my first person fingers since I crawled out from a tube of slime and rolled my supple baby body in the shards of broken glass beneath. I've been studying the art of soliloquy since crawling my way off a boiling-hot meteor and raising myself, by myself, in the middle of an ocean, with a fridge full of swords. I am exactly the kind of guy you want in charge of your story.

Anyway, back to the party. I have no idea where the plot was supposed to be going, but it’s my city now. I do what I want. I’m climbing the stairs. It’s awesome. Indescribably awesome. I’m like fucking Utena hiking the spiral staircase to the dueling arena, flashy silhouette effects bursting around me, earth shaking operatic J-Pop booming through the walls at one hundred and twenty decibels. Shit’s pumping.

I mean, not really. These are not things that are happening. I’m god-like, but not god-like enough to make actual anime happen yet. Yet.

Lack of cartoons aside, I’m feeling good about this. One fantastic thing about my narrative dominance, besides for the much more interesting POV and the sexy orchid orange, is that I get full access to everyone's location at all times. I'm like an extensive security camera network, except this time I'm not stuck in a pair of shades. It’s based on relevancy. I can’t see what our bit-part bartender is doing, for instance, but the main characters? Fuck yeah I can see the main characters.

John’s at the forefront. Jade dragged him out of his depression hovel so he could attend this sub-tier party. Which is the dumbest decision anyone could have ever made. This chronically mediocre gremlin has limited party points and Jade chose to cash them all in _tonight?_ He needs a better strategist.

He’s only first on my list due to his aggravating status as the main character in a story that’s long since bashed its head into a brick wall. He’s hiding away, shoved into the corner of a couch in Jane’s sun room, sitting in the pitch black. The neon glow of his screen lights up his handsome jawline as he texts someone on his woefully outdated phone. Who’s he texting? Everyone who matters is here.

After John, everyone’s relevancy is a crapshoot. All two of my progeny and their ecto-mom lounge around in a living room ripped straight from a 2005 Crate & Barrel catalog. The place screams “My favorite color is beige” and “I’d like to see your manager.” Roxy and her galpal roommate play chess by the fake electric fireplace. Rose and her beloved wife mockingly recite the text from one of Jane’s bodice ripper romance novels they stole from her library. Dave and Karkat sit a frustrating foot and a half away from each other and MST3K everything Rose reads aloud. She ignores them. 

Jane, on the opposite side of her mansion, is chatting with a crowd of important human socialites in her giant ballroom. This is where all the action is: there’s fine suits, a full string band, fabulous dancing, and horse divorce. Jade is in the midst of a group of beautiful humans of various genders and sexes, seducing them all with her knowledge of theoretical physics. Jake is… who cares. And them’s everyone.

So. Here I am. My name is Dirk Strider. I’m despondent, I’m drunk, and I’m writing first person fanfiction. The world is my fucking oyster.

Presented before me is the illusion of choice. Narratively it would make the most sense for me to go to all of them, albeit in whatever order I pleased. I guess there’s nothing stopping me from only selecting one or two of my friends and acquaintances to chat and/or mess with, but I’m a completionist. An ‘all the achievements on Earth C Steam’ kind of guy. It’s canon that I will practice my narrative prowess on all of them, and that’s direct from the word of god.

Whose narrative should I write?

> [JOHN](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44417341#workskin)  
> [JADE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44414242#workskin)  
> [ROSE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44415358#workskin)  
> [DAVE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44413537#workskin)  
> [JAKE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44417263#workskin)  
> [JANE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44417155#workskin)  
> [ROXY](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44414578#workskin)  
> [WHOEVER JOHN IS TALKING TO](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44415253#workskin)  
> [I’VE FUCKED WITH EVERYONE, TIME TO MOVE ON](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44602264#workskin)


	4. Thou indeed art good, and I am evil

Every single fifth sense I have is screaming at me, “Dave will be the easiest to commandeer.” Makes sense, I understand him deeply and there’s historical precedent for it. All I have to do is take a couple IQ points off my cunning verbiage and warp my sense of humor back ten years. Anyway,  
  


Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You glance at Karkat, a foot and a half away from you on the extremely beige couch. He glowers at Rose and Kanaya with piercing eyes, eyes that you could get lost in for hours. Days, even. The teeth popping out over the tip of his bottom lip look so cute in the glint of the fireplace. Hasn’t it been long enough? Don’t you think you should make a move on him? Maybe inch closer to him, loop an arm around the back of the couch, or place a hand on his thigh? 

You start by scooting a little closer to your boy toy. You shift on the cushion, getting ever nearer, the droning of Kanaya reading shitty pulp novels your romantic background soundtrack. Karkat notices you moving. He looks at you, expectantly. His lips part. And you freeze, trapped in his eyes.

DAVE: hold on i need to call dirk

WHY. WHAT. Fucking, shit, he’s calling me. With videochat.

I adjust my phone to get the best selfie-angle of my face before answering. He blinks into existence on the screen, impenetrable glasses and flat expression mirroring mine to a T. 

DIRK: What up?  
DAVE: dunno just thought of you  
DAVE: thought we could shoot the shit for a while since i have fuck all else to do at this party  
DAVE: i have no idea why the hell im here anyway i dont think ive talked to jane in like six full months and i dont plan on decreasing that span of time  
DAVE: hey arent you like literally inside this mcmansion somewhere  
DAVE: why dont you just come over here  
DIRK: I can’t leave this stairwell or it messes up the continuity of the CYOA due to reading order.

You accept this without question.

DAVE: i accept this without question  
DAVE: anyway you got time  
DAVE: you available for workshopping huge heaps of conversational bullshittery

Not that I’m opposed to banter with my ecto-progeny, I just didn’t plan for it. I suppose it makes sense that he’s able to subconsciously detect my egregious amounts of monologuing bullshit. He’s had enough practice at it. Guess all Dirks are megalomaniac controlling nutjobs, huh? Why should I be any exceptiiiiiiiiiiiii

You have a moment of clarity. The lights shift on, the camera draws back, the studio is revealed. Your blood freezes, and you feel so real and small and cold. For the first time in weeks, you feel human.

You love Dave. You adore him. Why are you doing this to him? Your _brother,_ half of your heart, your friend whom you've both looked up to and wanted to care for since the day you met him. Everything inside you is starting to shift and combine, but at this moment, you know _exactly_ which splinter of yourself wants to do this. You understand what part of you wants to micromanage him, wants to change him, wants to make him better. And you know that _you,_ the alpha Dirk running the show, the one _really_ at fault for all this, have lost your fucking mind. You’ve pulled so far back that you cannot see the individual features on the chess pieces, you can only see the board.

What are you doing? To your friends, your family, your loves? Horror soaks deep into your bones, into your chest and soul and mind. You cannot become this. You _cannot_ become this. You need to go home right now, grab that rope you've had prepped for a couple months, and kill yourself before you can ruin your brother for a second time. You understand, completely and viscerally, that you must die.

However, in your horror, you’ve lost control of the narrative. The author would very much like this story to continue on in the humorous/cathartic way she intended, and while she certainly likes intense shit, an ending where you kill yourself with no higher narrative purpose might be a little _too_ intense. So perhaps it's OOC that you don't immediately off yourself, whatever. She can't leave everything up to the self-hating characters, you see, or nothing would ever get done.

So, just a reminder: You have a pointless existence, Dirk. You are a character in a story that reached its apex and puttered out long ago, Dirk. There's no plot anymore. No arcs. Your friends are just characters. Tools in a story. You're all dolls, and _you're_ the only one with the ability to play with them. Nothing you do to Dave will ever, ever, ever fucking matter. He's just a toy to write fanfiction about. And you are the _only_ one who can create meaning out of it. You got it together now? You back at stage one of Ultimate Dirk Ascension again? Great.

DIRK: I... sure.  
DAVE: whoa  
DAVE: you alright there  
DAVE: you look like you just ghosted into the fifth dimension and returned a broken man  
DIRK: I know that statement was a joke, but you surprisingly hit the nail on the head.  
DAVE: wow what a true thing you just said ive never believed any of your bullshit more in my entire life  
DAVE: jesus are you fucking WASTED or something  
DIRK: You got me.  
DIRK: I'm drunk off my ass.  
DIRK: I completely lost my train of thought.  
DAVE: holy shit dude  
DAVE: but youre the actual literal conductor of the thought train  
DAVE: driving it on the daily route to obtuse monologue village  
DAVE: this is going to be a black mark on your perfect record  
DAVE: i dont think youre gonna win employee of the month this time around  
DIRK: I know. I'm embarrassed.  
DIRK: There's only one way out of it. Only one way to spare me the shame of having to live any further in a world where I derailed my mental shinkansen and brought disgrace upon the company.  
DIRK: You know what you must do.  
DAVE: i hope one of those funky little martini swords will work cuz thats all i got on hand  
DIRK: Shit. I'll take it. I await death by transparent pink plastic with bated breath.  
DIRK: I have to ollie, dude.  
DIRK: Catch you on the flipside.  
DAVE: sayonara

I should wait until I’m fully sober to mess with Dave’s love life. Do some research before a second round. Don’t want to blow my load early.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	5. Thou art merciful, and I am impious

Jade stands in the middle of a group of six characters of various species and genders, and attempts to convince them to join her next interstellar orgycation.

JADE: so what im saying is that the fifth dimension was historically more of an abstraction of space for purposes of algebraic computation  
JADE: but our existence in paradox space proves otherwise!  
JADE: seriously considering the fifth dimension as an imperceivable physical entity and long range field is fully on the table  
JADE: as well as providing validity to many theoretical frameworks and little string theories

Dicks: hard. Panties: moistened. Bulges: wriggling. This is the hottest thing anyone in existence has ever heard.

I don’t know shit about Jade. In an ideal scenario, where I’m not drunk and despondent and writing first person fanfiction, I would have gotten a profile on her before attempting this. Understand her motivations, her interests, her characterization. All I’ve got on her at the moment is “smart, sleepy, slutty, shafted,” and thus I can only guess at her level of intuition. But considering her biological siblings consist of the densest characters in this entire fucking story: John, Jane, and _fucking Jake,_ it’s safe to assume she won’t pick up on my narrative control. And besides, once I’ve got my fingers lodged in her brain, it’s easy to go along with her natural actions and glean her backstory.

Still, I’ll be more careful with her than the others. Tweak her gears just a little bit, with a subtle hand.  
  


Your name is JADE HARLEY. You’re feeling large and in-charge in the middle of this ballroom, in your dazzling 3AM dress that you re-alchemized just last year. You’ve got more cleavage to fill it out this time around, and a hell of a lot more leg to show, which is fantastic news for you. You’re lookin’ fine, feelin’ fine, and schoolin’ these kids on a subject you’re passionate about. There’s no way you aren’t getting laid tonight.

This fifth dimensional talk has you thinking about all the other dead yous out there. You’ve felt the tug of them here and there, thousands of Jades pulling at the edges of your mind (wait, shit, really?). If you so desired, you could reach out and absorb them into you, gather every Jade into your heart and achieve something grand (really? _Jade?_ Of all people?). 

You’re not sure if you’re ready to accept the infinite loneliness that your ultimate self will bring you. How will your splinters change you as a person? Will you grow or regress? Will pulling away from the playing field limit you to seeing your friends as beloved toys to play with?

With your optimistic, benevolent attitude, you’re certain your ultimate self would be a patient, loving god of the narrative. Unlike- uh. Unlike someone you don’t talk to all that much.

JADE: anyway what this all means is that essentially theres a billion versions of every one of us out there  
JADE: which doesnt mean that any one iteration of ourselves are irrelevant!  
JADE: each brushstroke of our own self portraits are very important  
JADE: everything we do in every life adds up to a bigger picture  
JADE: and scarring one piece of ourself mars the masterpiece of the soul  
JADE: will we defile ourselves with black ink?  
JADE: or will we make our pictures prettier with lots of colors and careful lineart?  
JADE: but i guess that even if we make so many mistakes that our images turn out all dark and dreary at the end of everything  
JADE: maybe just one forgiving brushstroke on top of all the mess is enough to turn the image into a masterwork

Shit, I’m going to say it: I like Jade. Mostly. Not sure I agree with her extended, childish metaphor, but I hope she gets laid. I’m going to have to muse on what I can do with her. Not sure how to use her character for any higher plot points at the moment. But that’s okay, since the unsupervised narrative clearly doesn’t know what to do with her either. 

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	6. Thou art holy, I am miserable

Word. Roxy. I can see her just fine, hanging around with Calliope by the fireplace, but her inner thoughts are a mystery to me. Maybe if I jump right into it? Take the plunge? Go in cold-turkey?  
  


Your name is ROXY LALONDE, and you, uh. You’re playing chess. With your… girlfriend? No? Friend? I…  
  


Your name is ROXY LALONDE and you sure are… you are… uh.  
  


Your name is ROXY LALONDE and…  
  


Alright, fuck it, her aspect is clearly blocking my superior narrative dominance. This would be a problem if I expected Roxy to catch onto me, call me out, or do anything of narrative relevance at all. I like the gal, but she’s sure grown passive in these miserable post-game years. She hasn’t texted me for months.

It’s not a problem that I cannot control her. Her arc finished with the close of the game, and she’s been sitting here in stagnation ever since. She will not develop any further. She won’t do anything of consequence, just remain passive and happy until her ultimate self eventually begins to wear on her psyche, which at this rate will be about thirty years down the line. But until that point, I’m certain she won’t surprise me at all.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	7. Thou art just, I am unjust

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you are currently sitting in a dark room and texting TEREZI PYROPE.  
  


SHIT. I straight up forgot Pyrope existed. This seems like an oversight, and something that my drunk self definitely should not investigate any further, but we’re livin’ it up here in Stridertown tonight. Let’s see how far I can stretch my narrative omnipresence. All the way to the furthest ring, perhaps?  
  


Your name is TEREZI PYROPE. You hover in the grinding pull of the black hole, game constructs and debris whirling past you, your red jetpack guiding you in your long, dark night. You’re thin and emaciated, after many ages out here. You’ve always been sharp, but the amount of bone showing through your gray skin is off the charts. Your elbows are like coat hangers.

You hold your phone out in front of you. You’re texting John, your rock, your one connection to the world you left behind. You pour out your sweet nothings to him, huffing the screen after each sentence you type, because you can smell his reply for some fucking reason. How’s that even work? You tilt your head up, your blind eyes staring up at a nonexistent sky. 

TEREZI: W1LL YOU SHUT UP? 1’M H4V1NG 4 PR1V4T3 CONV3RS4T1ON H3R3!

Fuck me. Abort, abort. Mission canceled. Pulling back now. Safely back in my own head now.

How the fuck could she hear me? Is it her aspect? Is my narration _that_ disjointed from her characterization? Or is she on my level too? I think I’d know if she was on my level. I’ll have to look into this further, when I’m not crouching in a stairwell at Jane’s shitty party.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	8. Thou art light, I am blind

It will be easy to control my dear daughter.

We're on the same plane of esoteric bullshit, and thus I don't have to change my voice to match her theatrics. She won't even realize I'm being a helicopter parent, that’s how smooth I’ll be. I watch the Machine twist and turn and focus on her, and I wrench her gears the way I want.  
  


Your name is ROSE LALONDE. You sit on the beige couch with your hands in your lap and smile pointedly at your wife. And while your dearest is a beautifully entertaining work of art as she reads Jane's harlequin romance novel, you cannot help but drift in your ultra-philosophical and solipsistic thoughts. You've been having headaches lately that you haven't told a soul about, but they're triggering something dark within you. Flashes of other selves, other worlds, that leave you feeling hollow and empty and ill. But it will be quite some time before you're ready to accept them, or interpret what they mean.

You pick up your phone and... Text Dirk?

TT: I just had a thought.

There's no way she's onto me. Keep it cool.

TT: Do tell.  
TT: Less of a thought and more of a parable.  
TT: I cannot share it with my current company. You're the only soul who takes my poetics at face value, like the little bitch you are.  
TT: Flatterer.  
TT: Anyway, the parable is as follows: A moth sees two lights before it. The first, and closest, is a bonfire. Its flame soars high into the night, consuming all in its path with a tempting warmth.  
TT: The other a flashlight, shining further off.  
TT: The moth, following its natural appetites, is drawn directly to the flame in order to seek its happiness. It ignores the flashlight, because although it would provide the same joy, it is farther away and a much tougher struggle to get to.  
TT: And thus, it burns.  
TT: The undying hunger for light drives it to inevitable death.  
TT: Thoughts? Concerns? Critiques?  
TT: The point doesn't come across in a concise manner.  
TT: For instance, let's say the moth somehow resists his instincts and beelines towards the flashlight.  
TT: Once he arrives, he finds nothing. His joy is trapped behind a barrier of glass, a light he is unable to obtain.  
TT: If you are a moth, an insect, something that does not matter in this world, then this is a fate worse then death.  
TT: The moth should choose to die burning in pleasure as opposed to standing on a glass wall, living out a meaningless existence, unable to obtain his desires.  
TT: Are you projecting?  
TT: Why would I be projecting on a moth?  
TT: It sounds like you're projecting.  
TT: I'm not projecting on a moth.  
TT: Dirk. Daddy. *Daddy.* Have you been plunged into a...  


  


TT: How'd you send that over SMS?  
TT: Apps.  
TT: Ok.  
TT: You're going to hell for that pun, objectively.  
TT: I welcome sweet oblivipun with open arms.  
TT: Going through a Dark Night would require me to be a well-rounded person with any thoughts and feelings beyond that of a particularly complex chess engine.

You're not going to argue with him. He's got one hell of a point. In fact, you're not sure you could think of a better metaphor for Dirk's complete, impenetrable cool.

TT: You do have the emotional complexity of a piece of printer paper.  
TT: 2D is my favorite dimension.

You decide that this conversation with Dirk has run its due course, and set your phone down on the couch arm. Kanaya is reading something riveting about huge bosomed blonds in Highland costume and you don’t want to miss it.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	9. Thou, life, I, death

I haven't paid much attention to Jane lately. 

I ditched everyone once I fucked off from Jake's indescribably tacky mansion and moved into my own studio. Jane and I still talk, but it's all about "political supervision"-this and "capitalist stock engineering"-that. Which is fine, that's what I'm here for. I’m an engineer. My purpose is to machinate.

But let’s be real. None of this fucking matters. This whole Earth C power dominance shit is the goddamn B-plot. I could see myself getting invested as a pet project, or for filling in some plot holes, or for giving Jane a happy life, but I’m not feeling it at the moment. I do like her, but she’s a very flat character, to the point in which I doubt she’ll ever obtain her ultimate self. Edit my voice just a little and I can slip into her like a glove.  
  


Your name is JANE CROCKER, and you’re not having very much fun at your own party. You’re currently surrounded by absolute peasants, the bottom feeders of society, but you’ve got to put on shapewear and a pretty face nonetheless. The children gathered around you are social media influencers who do not understand the importance of your politics, but they wield an inordinate amount of power nonetheless. It’s just not fair! They’re so shallow, and you’re so deep and real and lively. It’s a necessary evil that you have to court them for your business endeavors.

All they care for are hits and likes and brand sponsorships. Don’t they know they are only as important as the things they love? You care about much grander things, like free markets and trade agreements. You do your best to convince the small group of humans to see the light.

JANE: The tragedy in being addicted to trivialities is that our lives become trivial!  
JANE: It’s like a barb wrapped around a poor little bird’s leg, that prevents it from flying.  
JANE: You must free yourself from your wire and begin to care about what’s really important!

Maybe that was too vague. You narrow it down to something tangible, something understandable.

JANE: Like finances!  
JANE: Might I recommend an economics course at your local Crocker college?

That’s not going to sell them. You pull out the big guns.

JANE: And for your perusal, and a guarantee of your five-star review, how do some pre-release Crockercorp crocs sound? Available in your favorite colors: red or pale blue. Terms and conditions may apply.

There’s cheering from the group. You are certain you have gained their support for the near future.  
  


Christ, that was easy. I could do a lot with Jane. I could also do nothing with Jane. She’s an empty shell full of possibilities, and I don’t want to jump the gun just yet. I’ll leave her alone for the foreseeable future.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	10. Thou, medicine, I, sick

Jake is currently locked in a broom closet with a blueblooded troll bitch. There's a lot of tongues going in a lot of holes at the moment.

Am I really doing this? Am I such a masochist that I'm going to write porn novels about my ex literally having sex with some random slut in a closet that smells like Pine Sol and used buckets? Why yes I am.

Might as well jump in headfirst. Take the plunge. Metaphorically cracking my knuckles and stretching out my shoulders over here. Time to illustrate some fucking erotica inside Jake English's stupid, vapid mind. If I can do this, I can do anything.

I'm certain I can imitate his voice well enough, since it would be embarrassing if I spent all that time with him and didn't understand his characterization. How long were we together? Was it a combined total of four years, six months, three days, and two hours in various forms of relationship purgatory? I can't remember, because our relationship really didn't mean anything to me whatsoever, in any facet, at all, and it never has been important to me, ever, in my life. Let’s do this.  
  


Your name is JAKE ENGLISH, and BOY HOWDY, are you dazzled by the blue buxom princess you're currently pinning to the wall. HOT DIGGITY FUCK, her gams sure are... meaty.  
  


No. No. Fuck this. I can't do this. You can literally kill me before you catch me think-speaking in Jake's shitty quirk. Entering into his mind is like drowning in a pool of mashed potatoes, and speaking in his garbled, primitive jargon is like adding a fifty pound weight to your ankles as you kick through mounds of buttery potato muck. Honestly, his characterization is so shallow I’m pretty sure I can say whatever the fuck I want and he’ll think it’s from his own head. Let’s try this again.  
  


Your name is JAKE ENGLISH. You slip your tongue out of this girl’s wet mouth to trail kisses down her neck. She fucking loves it, she’s moaning and groaning, there’s a geyser bursting between her legs. You’re so good at this. You’ve been practicing necking for four years, six months, three days, and two hours.

You remember where to push, where to bite. How to do that thing with your tongue on the dip of her neck, right where her jawline meets her throat. Just the way Dirk liked it. Just how he trained you to do it. You remember Dirk, right?

You can’t help but feel empty at the thought of Dirk Strider, masterpiece of masculinity and the perfect specimen of maleness that you let slip through your fingers. You remember how he loved you, how you cruelly crushed him because you weren’t capable of any feeling beyond the base tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Aren’t you lonely, Jake? Don’t you wish you could love, Jake? Don’t you wish you had the ability to care about anyone, Jake? Don’t you wish you saw people as more than puppets to fuck?

You pull away from her. You feel hollow. Like everyone you have ever slept with, this woman means absolutely nothing to you. She is just a future warm hole to plow, and you blink at her in the dim closet light with the dawning realization that something is very wrong with you.

You open your mouth to say something decidedly stupid.

JAKE: Is all this lustful desire of mine just a vehicle to assuage the ache of separateness?  
JAKE: A shallow representation of the longing to be reunited with something barely out of my grasp?

Uh.

Readers. Friends. Countrymen. Don’t be tricked by his articulate ramblings. There’s a couple glaring holes in his ill-thought self-examination. For instance, longing for a higher purpose would require Jake to have any longing beyond his lower half. Anything he just spouted from his mouth is purely due to my influence alone, and reveals nothing about his inner character whatsoever.

The woman’s mysterious troll genitalia calls, and she ignores his inconsequential musings. He swings right back into the festivities, like he didn’t just wax philosophic in the middle of a broom closet. And she's touching his chest, now, he takes off her dress, now, let me _out of this godforsaken story already,_ fuck this, I'm switching POV characters.

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	11. Thou, supreme truth, I, utter vanity

Ah, the main character. 

The bland everyman. The confused nobody in a cast of colorful characters. If the reader fails to project on any of the main cast, blank-slate John will surely get their sympathies. He’s like the personification of one of those newspaper zodiac columns— generic enough to be relateable to everyone, specific enough to trick people into believing he has actual substance.

I do not talk to him, but I understand every facet of him perfectly. Without a story, he’s become despondent. Depressed. His entire personality is too dependent on the narrative for him to continue functioning. And he’s so fucking boring that nobody bothers to talk to him. Dave and the other original kids still text him, for reasons I do not comprehend, but otherwise he’s retreated into his shell and I don’t expect him to ever emerge.

Until I call for him, that is. Whenever that day comes.

And so, I take control of him…

Alright what in the sweet fuck is up with those nonsensical giant taglines. I'll investigate it later when I'm sober. Mark it on my //TODO list.  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT. You’re sitting in a dark room in Jane’s house, currently in the middle of a text conversation with an old friend, telling her about your insomnia problems that you vehemently insist aren’t problems. You’re typing out some hamfisted movie quote, but decide not to send it, because it’s fucking dumb, John. You stare at the dark room, and think of your life. Think of your choices.

You’re the main character, and you’ve wasted your life away doing nothing. You could have been creating meaning for everyone, creating a new plot, a new narrative, and all you’ve done is sit on your ass. You’ve wasted years of your immortal time with your sheer ineptness. You feel terrible about this, which is justly deserved.

JOHN: hey, complete topic change...  
TEREZI: BUT 1 W4S SO 1NV3ST3D 1N YOUR L1F3 DR4M4  
TEREZI: PL34S3, DON’T T34R M3 4W4Y FROM M3D1OCR3 D3SCR1PT1ONS OF YOUR B3DROOM C31L1NG  
JOHN: one day i will fly up there and strangle you, i swear.  
JOHN: anyway i have a question.  
JOHN: do you ever feel like you can’t stop making the same mistakes?  
JOHN: even though you feel yourself making them...  
JOHN: and know they’re going to hurt you...  
JOHN: you keep messing up in the same way over and over, no matter what?  
TEREZI: COULD YOU S4Y........ 1T JUST K33PS H4PP3N1NG???  
JOHN: i guess i could say that.  
JOHN: if i were super lame.  
TEREZI: 1T M4Y 4L4RM YOU TH4T, Y3S, 1 DO F33L TH4T W4Y  
TEREZI: 1T’S 4 H4RD P1LL TO SW4LLOW, 3GB3RT, BUT 1’M NOT 4CTU4LLY P3RF3CT >:]  
TEREZI: 1T’S L1K3 4N 4DD1CT1ON, 1SN’T 1T?  
TEREZI: YOU ST4Y 1N TH3 S4M3 PL4C3 FOR Y34RS 4ND Y34RS 4ND YOUR TH1NKP4N R3W4RDS YOU FOR 1T  
TEREZI: 3V3N THOUGH 1T’S NOT TH3 MOST STR4T3G1C MOV3 FOR TH3 LONG RUN! 1N F4CT, 1T C3RT41NLY DO3SN’T L34D TO LONGT3RM H4PP1N3SS 4T 4LL!  
JOHN: how do you stop?  
TEREZI: B34TS M3  
TEREZI: L3T M3 KNOW 1F YOU F1ND TH3 4NSW3R

Fuck this. I give up. This is so easy it’s sad. Who’s next?

> [<==](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/44260495#basehsanchor)


	12. GIVE INTO YOUR DIRK SIDE

Those giant-text taglines were bothering me. You know,

I drunkenly flew home, dug out my old 2012 Wikipedia database I once hosted via radio waves beamed from a satellite I hijacked when I was twelve, and found my answers.

Most of the gargantuan text blurbs are in reference to the untitled Catholic Carmelite poem 'La noche oscura del alma,' written in the 16th century. Perhaps you've heard of the English title: **The Dark Night of the Soul.** This poem has, like, mega deep lore. There are two gigantic rambling commentary books the author shat out about it. Did I actually read said books? Hell no. There's no point in reading religious texts when you know who the real holy trinity is: me, myself, and I. 

Anyway, from my incredibly thorough delving into outdated Wikipedia summaries that I'm sure are 100% accurate, I learned a couple things. There's not just one Dark Night. In fact, there are four types of 'nights,' based on various combinations of imagination, spirit, activeness, and passiveness. Once you make it through all of them, you End of Evangelion it and Human Instrumentality-project into God.

The four nights are how you merge with Him. For example, the first night the author focuses on is the "active night of the sense." The nights of the senses are essentially forced desire with no zeal. Like when you're depressed and you know you have to make yourself a hot pocket, but you don't _want_ to make yourself a hot pocket, but you have to do it anyway because otherwise you're taking a giant dump on your well being. Depression meals are basically the active dark nights of the soul, except with less Catholic garbage involved.

There’s a couple more facets to the nights of the senses, but it’s all basically the same shit spouted by every ancient Earth A/B religion. There’s a massive list of no-nos for entering into your first dark night. No greed, so no hoarding robot parts in every corner of your man cave. No vanity, so no more masturbating to your beautiful visage in the mirror. No possessiveness, so no giving a shit when niche podcasts steal your incredible puns. The point isn’t that you’re supposed to resist these temptations entirely on willpower; you’re instead supposed to redirect the pleasure you would normally get from those activities into communion with God.

To enter into this night is the first step on a long journey to reunite and embrace the beloved Divine. To utterly forgo normal blasé pleasures and trigger depression, only to receive intense sensual and spiritual pleasure once you illuminate at the end of your nights. If that sounds incredibly sexual it's because it is. Read between the lines and you can hear this guy literally salivate over the thought of bottoming for Jesus. 

I don’t blame any motherfucker out there who tried and failed to go through their dark night. First off, I’m glad they failed, the whole thing is bullshit. _I'm_ depressed, but do you see me trying to seek enlightenment out of it? No, that'd be stupid, unrealistic, and contrary to all psychological discourse on the subject. Second off, being in the midst of a night of the senses must feel like the whole world is gray and lifeless. You’re so desperate to feel something, _anything,_ that you devolve into sexual decadence, or throw yourself into your hobbies, or dissolve into the sin of the self. 

Whew. What a ride. What was the goal of this one sided dialectic again? Right. The giant taglines.

The taglines are a remnant of wherever the story was going before I took over. A theming so strong it carried through, slipped into the gears of the Machine, and passed my drunken notice. But I’m sober now. And in this town, I write my own fucking theming. I’ll keep my brilliant symbolism, allusions, and pervasive narrative ideas a secret. Where’s the fun if I just _spell out_ what a story is supposed to be saying? That’d be the stupidest plotting decision ever put to paper.

But “La noche oscura del alma” is the exact kind of pretentious bullshit I can get behind. I'm doing this on purpose now. Think of it as a red herring to throw you off the real theme, whatever that may be. Let's kick it off with...

-I started to play a dating sim.

Despite the release of my inhibitions during Jane’s party, my mental control went down surprisingly well. I see no harm in “playing” with my friends while I muse on what to do in order to create narrative meaning in this shitty post-canon world. Perhaps experimentation will spark inspiration in me.

I will immediately boot a couple characters from the so-called "dating" pool, although I'm certain all three of them would have been gen routes. Roxy's out, because I obviously can't narrate her life. Jane too, because I need to sit on her for a bit, figure out a good narrative purpose for such a powerful character in the B-plot. And Dave, because… I don’t feel like it.

The others intrigue me. Jade, first of all, peaked my interest in a way I didn’t expect. I knew Rose took her first step down the staircase of ultimate self ascension, but Jade’s already tumbling down those tiers like she took a running leap at it. And nobody even warned her about the stairs, bro. What would happen if I helped Jade reach ultimate selfhood? How would her powers manifest in a godlike state? How could I control God Jade to create meaning?

There’s John, the main character of a long dead story. If John were one of my progeny, I wouldn’t fuck with him. I wouldn’t risk tweaking the main character’s brainstem if there was a single chance they could catch on. But the guy has fucking English genes flowing in his veins, I could probably narrate, ‘hey, it’s me, Dirk Strider, beaming thoughts to your brain,’ and he’d brush it off as an obtuse homosexual erotic fantasy. It would be interesting to see how I can use him to affect the barren remains of a ‘plot’ in Earth C. 

There’s Terezi, who can hear me. I should get her on my side early, tempt her, build up a metanarrative rapport, or perhaps offer help in her doomed quest. This is probably the most risky character route to investigate as I know fuck-all about the girl, but I can always pull back if things get too hot in the kitchen.

And there’s Rose. My beloved daughter. I won’t be as bold with her as with the others. I know, deep in my shriveled black heart, that she could wreck me if I gave her the slightest opening. Perhaps in her I can find a comrade, someone who might understand the literal hell I’m going through. I’ll have to be careful no matter what.

And Jake… I cannot _wait_ to make Jake's life miserable.

Options upon options. And probably recursive options within those. The act of deliberation caused multiple paradox space futures to open up before me. All are canon. None are canon. I have no idea where they lead. I cannot actually see the future of the plot unless one of these narrative splinters dies. And none of these routes are tagged for major character death, so I’m in the dark as much as you guys. Perhaps all routes converge into the same ending, or perhaps I only have the option to pick _one_ character. Better make it a good one.  
  


> ~~JAKE~~ (future update)  
> ~~JADE~~ (future update)  
> [TEREZI](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/52918609#workskin)  
> [JOHN](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663271/chapters/50859139)  
> ~~ROSE~~ (future update)


	13. THE VENGEFUL GOD OF POETIC JUSTICE TAKES HER SEAT AT THE TABLE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(sorry for the long break!)_
> 
>  
> 
> _This route is rated M for:_  
>  _some sexual content, coercion, suicidal thoughts, severe depression, existential crises._
> 
> _This route has a good end._

How better to create meaning than to make it character driven?  
  


It's a shame that John is the only creature in the entirety of paradox space possessing the ability to cure the narrative depression, but he can't even cure the depression of his soul. Honestly, this is a good thing. I'd loathe to see what John 'Gary Stu' Egbert would come up with as a thematic lifeline. Probably some All-American fantasy about nuclear families and two children and a white picket fence and a dog. 

He's practically begging for me to take the reigns and drive his horse to green plotline pastures. Currently, said horse is fused to his depression bed at the early morning hour of 2PM. Nothing a little elbow grease can't solve. Time to try out my impeccable character voice.  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you lay on your back amidst unmade sheets. You're so tired. You feel the ache down to your bones. But you can't sleep. How long has it been since you've eaten? What’d you have for breakfast? Cold pizza at 5AM, you think. For the third day in a row.

You’re tired of this. You want to feel the wind on your face again. You want to feel the hammer beneath your palm again. You want to tickle the ivories again, because it’s what Dear Old Dad would have wanted. You imagine his hands grabbing yours and pulling you out of bed.  
  


You get up.  
  


C’mon.  
  


You stretch your arms and get out of bed.  
  


You get up.  
  


Get up.  
  


John, get up.  
  


> [S] John: Get Up.  
  


Alright, you’re still in bed. So maybe I’m not the best person to be doing this. Maybe I project a little too much. Maybe I’m not great at convincing someone that today will be better when I don’t believe it myself. Or maybe you’re just so depressed not even the voice of fucking God can command you to leave your bedroom.

My gut feel is that he's too depressed. Mega depressed. I mean, has he ever thought of doing yoga? Get good enough at yoga and you can suck your own dick. Dark night of the soul my ass, all you need to cure the hole in your heart is a healthy dose of auto-fellatio. Sayonara, depression; I've got a rock hard cock in my mouth. 

Even if he's not going to do the downward dog, dude probably needs to get up and walk around before I can do anything with him. Maybe I should drop by, in person. Shake him up a bit. Not like I have anything better to do.

I fly to his house. It's a beautiful sunny day out. The clouds are perfect. The sky is too blue. The wind rustles gently through the leafy tree on his lawn. The denizens of his kingdom cutely flutter about on his street, wearing little fedora hats and pretending they're sentient. John's house is a picture of the American Sburban Dream, albeit with a tattered birthday banner strung across the roof. It flits in the breeze.

I land on the concrete stairs leading up to his door, hover my finger over the doorbell, and push it for a long five seconds. In the shadow of his room, John stirs. I stop holding the doorbell, wait two more seconds, and then press it down for even longer. Irritated, John jerks up to a sitting position, swings his legs off the bed, and ruffles his already tousled hair. His eyes are bleary, and it takes him too long to find and put on his glasses in the deep, dark night of his room. I stop ringing the doorbell the moment they're set on the bridge of his nose.

He keeps his pajamas on, the wide boat neck of his grungy Joe Piscopo DEAD HEAT tshirt slipping off one of his broad shoulders, shuffles downstairs, and opens the door without bothering to look through the peephole. Big mistake. His face, mostly frozen by depression, moves into an expression resembling shock.

JOHN: uh.  
JOHN: dirk?

Ok. Let's try this again.  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT. You're not feeling too hot as of late, and getting down the stairs expended almost all of your limited energy. You can't remember the last time you had a visitor, and you can't say you're all that excited about Dirk fucking Strider of all people showing up unannounced. No matter how devilishly attractive he is. Are his abs _rippling_ under that tight black tank? Jesus. 

You should probably invite him in. It'd be rude not to, wouldn't it? Even though you can't remember the last conversation you had with him, it's the hospitable thing to do. Besides, you don't want him to think you're homophobic or anything.

JOHN: oh jeez, sorry for making you stand there like an idiot.  
JOHN: do you want to come in?

(Score.)

You step aside to allow Dirk to come in. For the first time in a year, you're suddenly self conscious about how little this house has changed since you were thirteen. The blinds are all drawn. It smells musty, unaired. Dirk strides through the livingroom, glancing around at your dusty couches and discarded untouched harlequins like the judgey diva he is. Uh oh, was that thought homophobic? Calling Dirk a diva? Are you repressing something, John? Are you slandering Dirk's good name because his handsome figure and coiffed hair is giving you the tingles?

JOHN: uhhhhh so are you going to say anything? or are you just going to walk through my house like you own the place?

Oops. I shouldn't push my luck.

DIRK: Just thought I'd drop by.  
DIRK: Heard you were having a  
  
JOHN: why did you just yell that at me.  
DIRK: Sorry. It slipped out.  
DIRK: Anyway, can’t a guy just stop by and say hello at random, without suspicion or prejudice?  
JOHN: no.  
DIRK: Ok.  
DIRK: I like your puppets.

Dirk points at a discarded clown in the corner. It sags pathetically. You have no idea if he's serious.

JOHN: thanks? they sort of suck, actually.  
JOHN: i should clean them up sometime.

You decide "better late than never" and walk over to the harlequin doll. You pick it up, as though to toss it out the window, and you go to throw-  
  


You throw-  
  


You throw-  
  


Dammit. Ok, apparently I've got some limits even when he's out of bed. John's too stuck in Dad-related PTSD to toss the My Size Barbie. He's currently standing in the corner of his house, holding this stupid clown doll, staring at it and thinking about how he's dishonored his father or whatever the fuck. Christ, he is _useless_ as a main character in this state. I can't make a purpose for him like this, not when he doesn't want one, not when _I_ don't even have one.

Guess there’s only one way out of it: I gotta cure his depression so he can be the main character. This is the most obvious route to take. While I’m just beginning to stretch my narrative muscles and can’t do all that much yet, I can at least get him to accept he has a problem. Baby steps. 

Can I just beam that into his brain? "You think you have depression?" Probably not. He's got those English genes in him. And just like Jake, he is as handsome as he is dense.

But I've got another idea. Nothing inspires self-reflection more than poignant, relatable, meaningful art, right? Let’s encourage introspection with a bit of movie magic. Back in the saddle, baby.  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT and you've just spent the last five minutes staring at a porcelain jester mask while your guest glares at the ceiling like he's trying to mentally yell at it. Maybe neither of you are feeling well today. You should suggest an activity so things don't get weird. You've got a ton of movies on the shelves surrounding your TV. Maybe you should watch _Girl, Interrupted?_ _Ordinary People?_ Uh, _Veronika Decides to Die?_

JOHN: hey, since you’re here, do you want to watch the virgin suicides or something?

Yikes.

DIRK: Not really.  
JOHN: ok what about die hard?  
DIRK: Isn't it like, August? Die Hard's a Christmas movie.  
JOHN: a man of taste, i see. what about wickerman?  
DIRK: Memed to death already.  
JOHN: vampire's kiss?  
DIRK: Same as above.  
JOHN: moonstruck?  
DIRK: Now you're just randomly picking Nicolas Cage movies.  
JOHN: hey, moonstruck's a masterpiece!  
DIRK: I'm not disagreeing, any movie with both Cher and Cage is destined to be a masterpiece, but are you really feeling the madcap ethnic Italian romantic comedy?  
JOHN: i mean, when am i not feeling madcap ethnic italian?  
DIRK: Fair. What about Caligula?  
JOHN: fuck you. i don't even have that.  
DIRK: John, if you don't watch Caligula with me, you're a coward.  
JOHN: let's watch krull.  
DIRK: Let's NOT watch Krull. Let's watch The House by the Cemetery. I can't believe you own that.  
JOHN: no way, i'd rather watch a romance or comedy or something.  
DIRK: Like I said, Caligula.  
JOHN: strider, i am going to flip.  
DIRK: Ben Hur.  
JOHN: waaaaaaaaaay too long.  
JOHN: what about... the divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood?  
DIRK: Why the hell do you think I'd want to watch Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood?  
JOHN: at this point i'm just having a dick measuring contest over which movies we've mutually heard of.  
JOHN: what about marci x?  
DIRK: Yeah, no. What about Steamboy?  
JOHN: lame. i'm anime shaming you. but if you want a foreign film... hmm... what about run lola run?  
DIRK: Hey, that's actually a good movie. The episodic nature of the narrative, each thread affecting the one coming after in subtle ways... Shit's dope.  
JOHN: oh, do you want to watch that?  
DIRK: No, I'm living it.  
DIRK: Keep going on the foreign film thought train. I'm feeling pretentious.  
JOHN: ummmmm the overcoat? heh.  
DIRK: That doesn't exist and both you and I know it.  
JOHN: let's see, what else do i own...  
JOHN: uh, babette's feast?  
DIRK: Damn. You got me.  
JOHN: ha ha, wow, really? i can't believe i just owned you with babette's feast, of all movies.  
JOHN: i guess my dick is way bigger.  
DIRK: I guess it is.  
DIRK: What's Babette’s Feast about?  
JOHN: it's JUST like caligula. trust me ;)

We start watching it. It’s not like Caligula. In fact, if there were ever a movie that was literally the polar opposite of Caligula, it'd be this one. Roughly 4% of the way into it I figure out he trolled me, and I can feel the fucker grinning like a maniac from a foot away.

I get pretty bored while watching this with him, and not just because the entire thing is in Danish. I get bored watching any movie at all nowadays. It's like, what's the point of drilling yourself down to the size of an ant when you're the guy holding the magnifying glass? What's the point of stopping to smell the roses when your nose is firmly wedged in the dank musk of the universe? What's the point of anything at all? _What's the point of it?_

I decide to start messing with John around the midway mark.

I really don't care about what's happening in the movie. Something about rejecting a fancy military suitor in bad 80s costuming. I'm certain this theoretically meaningful film is not relatable to my life at all in any way, shape, or form. The room is dark, the curtains closed, the glare of the TV blanketing us. It smells like dust. Some particles float in the blue light. John is heavy with the weight of depression, he sinks into the couch like sinking into the mud. I'm heavy too. I wonder if I can move him. And _how._  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you're barely paying attention to the film. It feels like there's a cloud over your eyes, and it's not because your glasses are dirty. You wonder why the hell Dirk is here, that maybe you should kick him out or text Dave about it, and then QUICKLY STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT, ha ha why would you want to kick Dirk out? Can't two bros who barely know each other watch a movie together in complete silence? Wow, you haven’t noticed until now that this seems kind of like… a date? The mood is kind of... romantic, even???

Dirk shifts, and the side of his hand brushes against your upper thigh. He keeps it there, like he doesn't notice he’s touching you. You guess you are sort of sprawled sideways across the cushions, it’s unavoidable that he’d make contact. But everything that Dirk does is annoyingly deliberate, isn’t it? Did he come over here because he’s interested in you? You bristle at the thought, and electricity courses through your body from where he’s touching you. You don’t move away.

JOHN: are you trying to seduce me, mr. strider?  
DIRK: Did you just misquote The Graduate at me?  
JOHN: what, no, that was totally not a misquote.  
DIRK: Like 12% of my immortal self is a computer. I can say with 100% accuracy that was totally a misquote.  
DIRK: The real quote is, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?," although applying it to this situation changes it to "Mr. Strider, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"  
DIRK: And the answer to that is, of course, no. That would be ridiculous.  
JOHN: ok.  
JOHN: you're as obvious as dave.  
DIRK: I take offense to that.  
JOHN: so why are you trying to make the moves on me? is it because i look like jake?  
JOHN: that's really sad. you should go to therapy.  
DIRK: NO, IT'S NOT BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE-  
DIRK: ...  
DIRK: I'm not trying to seduce you.  
DIRK: I'm morosexual and you're not nearly dumb enough.  
JOHN: oh, thanks! and here i thought you thought i was the scum of the earth.  
DIRK: I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re still a dumbass,  
DIRK: But you’re a funny dude.  
DIRK: Why the fuck haven’t we talked before?

Perhaps I’m imagining it, but a thick silence permeates the space between us. Actually, fuck it, I can make that a reality: A thick silence permeates the space between us. Without looking away from me, John hits pause on the remote, balancing on the arm of the couch. His eyes are a mirror of mine, although he doesn’t know it yet. Hmm. I didn't realize... That empty void in the pupils. I guess _understanding_ can come from even the most unlikely of characters, huh?  
  


Your name is JOHN EGBERT and you watch Dirk take off his shades. He sets them carefully on the arm of the couch. His naked gaze draws you in like a black hole. You stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back, and it does not occur to you to look away.

You sit up, slow. You’re too close to Dirk. Your shirt’s crooked, slipping off your shoulder. Dirk reaches out and touches the exposed skin there. It feels like the caress of an angel, like God has come down to bless you. You tingle.

You are terribly, desperately lonely. There is a hole in your soul that you cannot fill, no matter how hard you try. No one understands you, and no one ever will. You think, 'fuck it,' as you accept his touch. You never thought too hard about your compulsive heteronormativity, but this doesn't shatter your perceptions of yourself. No need to call yourself gay, or even bicurious. You're just going to mess around with a fellow broken soul, to see if they'll fill in some goddamn speck of the giant crack torn inside you. Intimacy might be nice, with someone equally lonely, desperate, and suicidal as you. With me. With me. With me.

DIRK: I... wait.  
DIRK: I don't want this.

You lose control of the story. The thought of coercing this guy into sex makes you feel sick to your stomach.

The precious moment of sanity hits you like a fucking brick. You can't become this. You can't become this. You think of the knot around your neck. You jerk away from John, bile rising in your throat, and you crumple in on yourself. You clutch your hair with the desperation of a madman, unable to move, your face pressed into your knees, trying to hide away from the world, from the noise of the Machine broadcasting your innermost feelings to you with the cold clinicism of a doctor’s report.

“Uh,” says John, and touches your back. “Are you okay? Do I smell bad or something?”

You are unable to respond, you are unable to say a word, because you know the moment you take action you’ll lose yourself in the gears.

What the fuck are you _doing?_ You came here to discover a narrative purpose and you wound up trying to mind control John into liking you within the span of an hour. Are you that lonely? Are you that cold and empty that you’ll jump the bones of the first person who understands that feeling just to grasp a single thread of connection? Are you so deluded that you can steam roll over their sexuality just to get what you want?

“Sorry,” you say, and the echo of your voice being repeated back to you infinitely within the story is fucking excruciating. “I’m forcing you into this. I need to go.”

You stay curled in on yourself, unable to stand. The TV hums. John rubs your back. The contact makes you want to peel your skin off. When’s the last time you’ve been held?

“No, uh, I’m sorry, I don’t think you’re forcing me into anything?” says John, awkwardly. “I think I misread some signals...”

How much are you in control of and how much of that was John? You can’t risk anything, you can’t risk anything. You have to leave, you have to get up, but the weight of John’s palm might as well be a thousand tons.

“Aren’t you like, some ultra-straight cis dude,” you say, into your knees.

"I don't really want to think about it, okay?" says John, wincing. "Can we just not talk about it?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," you say, like you're out of breath, and manage to sit up. You're shaking. You run a hand through your hair. Your voice comes out a stutter, and if John notices, he doesn't indicate it. "What do you want me to do?"

The air settles between the two of you like an old tarp. A hollowness darker than the night watches you through John's eyes, and you know you did not put it there. Something like empathy flickers through your chest-- it's been so long. You expect him to tell you to leave, you want him to tell you to leave.

"I guess I just..." he murmurs, and takes his glasses off. "Kind of want to feel something?"

Wrong answer, but ain’t that a mood. You do not move, you do not breathe. The abyss stares back at you. It is a long time before you feel comfortable enough to fall into it. Just two dudes, no rules, so depressed they don’t care what they’re doing. Just a hookup, just a hookup, it means nothing. But at least you feel something. At least John feels something.

Kissing starts sweet and slow, but ramps into desperation as the physicality, the novelty, cannot keep you from drifting away. You hear it, feel it, cannot ignore it. Clack, clack, goes the machine. The gears creak too loudly for you to stay grounded.

Let's be done with the generic "unbiased" narrator. I don't want my sexploits to be shared with the group unless _I'm_ the one controlling the presentation. In this case, I'm not going to present it at all, because no one, and I mean _no one,_ wants to read erotica in the first person.

For the record, I don't think the uncontrolled story is unbiased. I think it wants us to have kickin' tantric sex in John's rank depression bed. Not like I'm complaining. And judging by how John's hands are wedged up my shirt and fondling my rippling pectorals, I don't think he's complaining much either.

But it’s my city now. And in my city, we wax poetic about scholastic texts while we get busy with our mouths.

There’s this running theme in the companion book to **The Dark Night of the Soul,** called _Ascent of Mount Carmel._ Or, rather, there's a _lack_ of a running theme in the _Ascent._ The _Ascent_ is a drawn out monologue about going full Zen Buddhist and becoming one with the holy host, so there isn’t any emphasis on the actual human connection in the text. In fact, I’d say it even discourages it— not actively or anything, but just in the way the narrative is told. “Don’t let society control your virtues.” “Don’t build yourself up by depending on the appreciation/awe/envy of others around you.” “Don’t give into lust unless it is for the glory of God.”

It’s a very passive work. All about the act of accepting what you have, in your darkest days, and appreciating the things around you without taking joy from them. Happiness without ecstasy. Peace without indulgence. Controlling your behavior, but not too much. As you can see, I’m not doing a very good job of following those righteous suggestions. I want a dick in my goddamn ass.

JOHN: let's go upstairs?  
DIRK: Hmm? Yeah, dude.

We go upstairs. I open the window, for some light and air. The windchimes in his tree shimmer with a delicate sound. We continue.

John (not the John with me, but the John who wrote the damn book) suggests that virtues are not necessarily the same for everyone; that you have to fit them to the contours of your soul. Like, say, if you’re a construction worker, and it’s Lent or some shit and they want you to do a full fast, you’re just going to be tired and irritable if you do what the church says and skip all your food. You need those sick caloric gains in order to lift boards and shit, bro. The better thing to do, in construction bro’s case, would be to completely skip the fasting and use his skills to build a house for the poor or something. Don’t try to be what you’re not, or whatever. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, I’m sort of distracted. John (the John with me, not the John who wrote the damn book) is trying to get my pants off.

JOHN: ugh, god, these things are hideous.

I'm going to describe my outfit now. I have not described my outfit before, and I will not describe it again. I am currently wearing full-on Hot Topic tripp pants with the chain wallet and fake neon orange suspenders and everything. I have been wearing these the entire time. I will be wearing these in every route. I will wear these for the rest of the story.

There is no hiding my massive, gigantic boner in these puppies. It protrudes from my crotch like the horn of a unicorn. What can I say, getting my narrative chops wet over a handsome main character turns me the FUCK on. 

Anyway, back to Catholicism.

This mystic, virtue bending shit fell out of favor with the church some point. I don’t know when, probably after they tortured St. John for being too prolific. Maybe because his ideas were powerful. Like, look at me. To contour my virtues is to acknowledge that I can save myself, my friends, and the story through _control._ Through directing the narrative. My soul demands it, my _aspect_ demands it, and there is no other way I can bring salvation to this rotting, pointless world.

JOHN: oh, that's your dick?  
JOHN: with how much you talk about yourself, i thought it'd be smaller.  
DIRK: ...

So I’ve got to get good at this. I’ve got to fix John, I’ve got to make him better, and I’ve got to get him to drive the story to places where a B-character like me can’t take it. _He’ll_ be the guy I’m devoted to, the guy I’m trying to ascend to, the guy I’m trying to make into the perfect protagonist. John can create meaning, through his very nature, and I’ve got to get him there.

DIRK: Here?  
JOHN: mhmm…

And with that, let’s do a bit of a timeskip, at least narrative wise. I, personally, am not skipping _any_ of the fun, but you’ll have to miss out on the juicy bits.

...

And the bits after. We talked a little. Bantered. Sympathized with each other about some stuff. I'm not going to divulge the details. Let some things stay private. But just to stay on theme, gotta quote my obligatory Dark Night stanza:

I've never been a big nature guy. Don't care about the outdoors. But the soft rustling of the trees outside John's window are as soothing as the finest ASMR videos.

Deep orange flickers through John’s room. His sheets are flannel. The sun is setting when the doorbell buzzes. 

John stirs, next to me, from his nap. The doorbell rings five seconds, then waits, then rings again. John tugs the covers off both of us to sit up and rub his face. He puts his clothes back on.

Using my omniscience, I can tell the visitor ringing the doorbell is Terezi Pyrope, skinny as hell and clad in her standard outfit.

Wow. This is some real dramatic irony right now. It's so good you think I would have planned this plot contrivance. But I didn't.

I panic for a second, but manage to still myself and think rationally. Something’s off about her, the way she's standing on the doorstep. I don't know Terezi too well, but I don't think she's been this happy in a long time. Even I, the guy who tends to project his feelings on everyone, cannot mask the goddamn joy radiating off her. She's beaming as per usual, but her eyes aren't all crumpled in and gross and squinty and sarcastic. She's glowing from the inside-out. 

I lay back in bed, and let John go downstairs and answer the door. I want to see this dramatic reunion uninterrupted. They don’t need a third wheel.

He opens the door, and the look on his face is a touch more expressive than when he opened the door for me just a few hours ago. His shock brightens into a wide smile, and he tries to fix his hair. Key word: tries.

TEREZI: Hey loser. Long time no see! :)  
JOHN: !!!  
TEREZI: I thought I'd drop by and say hello. I've got a few choice words to doll out.  
JOHN: i'm glad you're back and all, but why are you talking like that?  
TEREZI: Like what?  
JOHN: like.......  
JOHN: i can't put my finger on it.  
JOHN: your voice sounds the same, but it's like you're more... articulate?  
JOHN: but that's stupid, because you're always articulate.  
TEREZI: Oh, shit. Hold up.  
TEREZI: *cough cough*  
TEREZI: 1S TH4T B3TT3R?  
JOHN: yeah!  
JOHN: did you have a bug in your throat?  
TEREZI: H3LL NO!  
TEREZI: 1T W4S D3F1N1T3LY JUST SHOCK OV3R L4Y1NG MY SM3LL-O-V1S1ON UPON YOUR UGLY MUG!

Now, reader, you and I both know that Terezi was speaking with _my_ fucking typing quirk. I'm baffled by this. One might jump to the assumption that I'm controlling her to a point where her voice is overridden by mine, but hell, you read the last chapter: I don't mention Terezi a single time. Unless if I've galaxy brained into subconscious character narration, this is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

I'm not a big fan of surprise plot twists when they don't involve me, so we're going to solve this little mystery right now. Scooby Doo this shit. Rip off the Terezi mask and reveal Old Man Jenkins. Let's do a little POV change.  
  


Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and for the first time in your life, you finally███████████████  
  


What the fuck?

Alright, next option. Let's see if this is the real Terezi. I direct my attentions away from the Terezi in John's house, and to the Terezi currently floating out there in the Furthest Ring.  
  


Your name is TEREZI PYROPE. You're shooting through the empty universe, searching through debris and floating jetsam for your lady love. You stop moving upon noticing the color of the narration.

TEREZI: STOP H4R4NGU1NG M3 W1TH YOUR CR34MS1CL3 T3XT! 1'M G3TT1NG 4 SUG4R OV3RLO4D!  
TEREZI: 4ND YOU DON'T W4NT TO S33 M3 W1TH 4 SUG4R OV3RLO4D!

Calm down, girl. I haven't communicated with you since the party, but I'll chalk that misunderstanding up to paradox space shenanigans. An alternate me created by my indecision on which narrative to fuck with probably just finished talking to you. Speaking of, any idea why there's a freaky-deaky, unnarrateable, SCP clone of you on John's doorstep?

TEREZI: PR3SUM4BLY 1T'S M3 FROM TH3 FUTUR3  
TEREZI: 1'V3 F1GUR3D OUT HOW TO TURN OFF YOUR 4NNOY1NG WH1T3 NO1S3 4ND 1'V3 COM3 TO M3SS W1TH YOUR P3RF3CT L1TTL3 STORY >:]

Great, you have no idea either. I'm ending this call. Hanging up. Pretend I just made one of those satisfying shut-clap noises with the shell cellphones.

Back to the Terezi in John's house... Hey, they're talking about me.

TEREZI: YOU JUST FUCK3D D1RK, R1GHT?  
JOHN: uh. no?  
TEREZI: Y3S YOU D1D  
JOHN: holy shit did you smell that on me? like did you actually smell the anal sex stank? that's so weird, terezi.  
TEREZI: H3 N33DS TO PUT H1S SH1TTY HOT TOP1C TR1PP P4NTS B4CK ON 4ND COM3 DOWN H3R3  
TEREZI: OR DON'T, 1 DON'T R34LLY G1V3 4 SH1T 4BOUT TH3 ST4T3 OF P4NTS ON D1RK. H3 C4N COM3 DOWN W1TH H1S D1CK SW1NG1NG 4ROUND 4ND 1 WOULDN'T B4T ON3 LONG 3Y3L4SH  
JOHN: okay? jeez, this is embarrassing. i'll go tell him i guess.  
TEREZI: NO N33D  
TEREZI: H3'S L1ST3N1NG R1GHT NOW

I can take a hint. I put my shitty Hot Topic tripp pants back on and come down there.

She’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch, crosslegged. Stick straight, no slouching, hands poised on her knees like she’s meditating. She’s smiling, too gently. The sunset rays light her hair and horns like a halo. It’s unnerving.

John’s sitting on the couch, facing her. He notices something’s wrong too. I sit down next to him, close enough to suggest something resembling intimacy, far enough away so it’s not awkward. He doesn’t look at me. He glowers at Terezi.

JOHN: terezi... you seem...  
JOHN: how do i put this gently?  
JOHN: you're really out of character!  
TEREZI: WOW! CH3CK YOUR 1N-CH4R4CT3R PR1V1L3G3, B1TCH!  
TEREZI: But you've got a point!  
TEREZI: And honestly, pretending otherwise is really crushing my vibe. It's like doing elementary school math tests when you've got a degree in Collegiate Legislacerator Death Calculus.  
JOHN: you're doing that weird thing again.  
DIRK: Stop stealing my typing quirk.  
TEREZI: Narcissistic, much? It could be Rose's!  
JOHN: what are you guys even talking about???  
TEREZI: Your future, obviously!  
TEREZI: Now, Dirk. John. It’s time for.....  
TEREZI: The Talk! H4h4  
JOHN: the talk?  
TEREZI: I would like to address the plot points that have happened in this route thus far:  
\- Dirk stumbled into a surprisingly consensual seduction, good for him!!!  
\- John became instantly depression-enamored with Dirk, replacing the JohnRezi that the “canon” universe was destined for  
\- It was implied that Dirk will become co-dependent on John and ruin him through self-hatred, as Dirk is wont to do  
JOHN: how are you making those bullet point noises with your voice?  
DIRK: Fuck you. Fuck you. That was NOT implied.  
TEREZI: I think the reader can glean the probable path the plot would take without intervention.  
TEREZI: Two suicidal dumbasses, one with narrative control, the other with retcon powers? Obsessed with each other? With no urge to reach out to their other friends?  
TEREZI: They’d either go off the rail and destroy 3V3RYTH1NG or make a horrible suicide pact! Real bad news, folks.  
JOHN: what?????  
DIRK: Alright. I’ve had enough. Who the fuck are you?

Terezi tosses her head back and laughs. 

Then this happens:

John's skin flickers white with speed lines, like he's getting torn apart. Electricity crackles around his body. His eyes widen, his hair ruffles in a wind I cannot feel, and he watches something I cannot see with tangible awe coursing through his body.

As someone who is very familiar with the feeling of ripping people's souls out like some kind of evil wizard, I can tell that whatever "Terezi" is doing to John is slightly to the left of that. More like reordering a soul instead of ripping it out, reshuffling it to accomplish something I cannot grasp. And unlike my soul rending ability, which needs a full-ass progress bar, whatever she does is instantaneous.

He is back to normal within seconds. The fraymotif vanishes, and along with it, Terezi. There is no noise or fanfare. It is just me and him, and the living room drowning in the liquid gold of a setting sun. It is oppressively silent. I search for her within the narrative, and I cannot find where she went. It's like she never existed at all.

John looks at me. It's like this fucking switch flipped in his head or something, like Terezi vacuumed the depression right out of him. He smiles, crooked, and props his elbow up against the couch like he's a bad boy leaning against a vending machine and he's got you all figured out and can play you like a fiddle. Pretty OOC, if you ask me.

When I try to take hold of his character, the concept of "John" is a horrifying, eldritch _thing_ that looms up to meet my mind. I cannot make sense of the massive machination that clinks and grinds before me. I know now what Terezi did to him. Now, it is not _just_ the abyss in our souls that we have in common.

Well. Fuck me, I guess.

John takes a deep breath, and then falls off the page. ~~ **== >**~~ (future update)


	14. THE WICKED GOD OF CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS TAKES HER SEAT AT THE TABLE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This route is rated T for:_   
>  _brief sexual content, mild blood & violence, **heavy** suicidal thoughts_
> 
> _This route has a true end._

Terezi is obviously the correct character to start with.  


There’s no fail state to this one. First off, Terezi is already aware of my presence, so I can’t really mess up, per se. What’s the worst that could happen? I make a fucking enemy of her? Luckily she’s in a completely inaccessible, desolate universe where her return is nigh improbable. This bitch is never gonna find Vriska.

How am I going to create _purpose_ with Terezi, though? I don't think I can. She isn't a character I can jumpstart the narrative with, she is simply a character to practice diegetic exercises on. You know, for strength training. I'm gonna get some sick gains and I ain't skipping leg day.

I get my workout snacks, do a couple squats, then kick my feet up on my desk and begin the exercise.  
  


Your name is TEREZI PYROPE and you are soaring through a field of bottomless, featureless whiteness. The black hole circles beneath you, and you do not look at it because you fear the object of your quest has long since been sucked into it. Debris floats by you, uninteresting and generic hunks of metal that offer no comfort. You are hyper aware of your loneliness. That you are the only living creature within thousands of nautical miles. That you are the only creature within hundreds of light years, living or dead, possessing a single iota of intelligence. You are so very, very alone.

TEREZI: H3R3 1 4M, DR1FT1NG 4LONG, 3NJOY1NG MY QU13T T1M3  
TEREZI: 4ND TH3N SOM3ON3 H4S TO GO 4H34D 4ND PROJ3CT H1S 1SSU3S ONTO M3 W1TH 4BSOLUT3LY NO W4RN1NG!!!

Hey, it's not projecting when you're actually feeling it, sweetheart.

TEREZI: 1 DON'T KNOW 4BOUT TH4T, COOLK1D

Don't call me coolkid.

TEREZI: TH3N DON'T C4LL M3 SW33TH34RT!  
TEREZI: 4T L34ST NOT UNT1L YOU T4K3 M3 ON 4 ROM4NT1C D1NN3R D4T3  
TEREZI: WH3R3 1 W1LL 34T YOUR F4C3 OFF

Like, literally or just in a pickup-line kind of way?

TEREZI: BOTH, OBV1OUSLY >:]  
TEREZI: 4NYW4Y, WHY 4R3 YOU BOTH3R1NG M3!?

I'm here to run experiments. Get yolked up on narrative juice. You're my weight training regimen so I can get swole on characterization.

Basically I'm here to tell you how you feel and then you tell _me_ how you feel. Capeesh?

TEREZI: HOW 4BOUT *1* T3LL YOU WH4T YOU F33L... 4ND TH3N YOU GO H4V3 4 TH1NKP4N M3LTDOWN 1N TH3 CORN3R B3C4US3 1'V3 CRUSH3D YOUR DUMB WORLDV13W???

Ah, but only one of us has narrative control. Only one of us is a literal god. I'm untouchable, at least from where you're standing. So let's get started.

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE. You stop extruding jets from your portable rocket pack, and stare up at the white void above you. You watch debris spiral a million miles in the air, and think of how they look like the stars of your homeland. You were happy then, playing games of justice with your toys, with your puppets. It was so much _easier,_ wasn’t it, when you could play with dolls and make your _own_ story. Now, you’re just running from who you are. You shake your head, and kick your jetpack back into gear, continuing on your quest to nowhere and no one.

Mind telling me what you're feeling? Did my voice affect you in any way that you’ll admit?

TEREZI: B1T3 M3!  
TEREZI: YOU'R3 WORS3 TH4N ROS3! 4ND TH4T’S 4 F34T!

We are cut from the same cloth, are we not? She is a perfect, precious clone of my being. I am she and she is me.

TEREZI: TOUCH 4 N3RV3, D1D 1? H3H3H3H3

No, you touched nothing of mine, interior or exterior. In fact, you're so embarrassed you broached the sensitive topic of a man and his sister-daughter-clone-self, you immediately forget that you brought it up at all. You continue drifting through space, and forget about the choice orange narrative swimming through your head. It's basically just pleasant white noise, spoken in a soothing baritone. 

TEREZI: WH4T 1N TH3 FR3SH H3LL 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT?  
TEREZI: YOU 4R3 4 T3NOR 4T B3ST  
TEREZI: 4ND 1 4M B31NG G3N3ROUS W1TH TH4T 4SS3SSM3NT!

I'm surprised you're an opera fanatic.

TEREZI: YOU M1SUND3RST4ND! 1 4M T4LK1NG 4BOUT 4 T3NOROC1T3RROR  
TEREZI: H1STOR1C4LLY, T3NORS 1N 4LT3RN14 WHOL3S4L3 SL4UGHT3R3D N4UGHTY GRUBS ON 12TH P3R1G33’S 3V3  
TEREZI: L1K3 W1TH 4 BUG Z4PP3R

Damn, Alternia's messed up. Was that a real thing?

TEREZI: NO! FUCK YOU, COOLK1D

Fuck. Fuck you, bitch. You are overcome with uncontrollable lust for the absolute snack currently narrating your life. Mmm, god, his halcyon, unimaginably deep voice gives you the rumblies. 

TEREZI: UHHHH 1 GU3SS 1 4M K1ND OF HUNGRY >:?

Hungry for gigantic oblong meat products. 

TEREZI: UGGGHHH WH4T'S TH4T SM3LL?  
TEREZI: YOUR SMUGN3SS R33KS, COOLK1D. 1T’S RU1N1NG MY 4PP3T1T3!

Stop that. 

TEREZI: STOP WH4T

The coolkid shit.

TEREZI: WHY? DO3S 1T RUSTL3 YOUR J4MM13S TO B3 COMP4R3D TO D4V3? H3H3H3H3H3H3H3  
TEREZI: DO3S 1T WOUND YOUR T3ND3R L1TTL3 BLOODPUSH3R TO KNOW TH4T YOU'LL N3V3R 3V3R M34SUR3 UP TO YOUR D34R D34R BROTH3R, 4ND 3V3RY T1M3 1 C4LL YOU COOLK1D YOU JUST F33L SOOOOOOOO HURT?  
TEREZI: YOU R34LLY 4R3 4N OFFBR4ND D4V3. YOU'R3 SO 34SY TO R1P 4P4RT >:]

Ok. I can play this game. You want baggage, _TZ?_ I can give you fucking baggage, TZ. I can see the whole goddamn story, remember? You want to be reminded of how you messed up, how you can't stop yourself from hiding your feelings while you ruthlessly drag your loved ones through the grinder, how you're trying to engage in a witty rapport with a bargain bin, pseudo-evil version of Dave for some semblance of familiar comfort, _don't you, *TZ.*_

TEREZI: 1F YOU W3R3 SO SM4RT, YOU'D KNOW TH4T TH3 T3R3Z1 LUST1NG 4FT3R B4RG41N B1N D4V3S 1S 1N 4NOTH3R T1M3L1N3!

No, TZ, it's _you._ And you know it. I know what it feels like, the crippling burden of knowing everything in your soul, seeing yourself spread across thousands of timelines in thousands of ways. It’ll drive you _mad,_ TZ, the reconciliation between a “you” who loved Dave and a “you” who would never think of loving Dave as a possibility, of selves that

You are drawn out of your monologue by accidentally slamming your forehead into solid metal. You were angry stomping around your room and rage-monologuing at Terezi and not paying attention to how you were pacing around your studio. Your issues with zoning out were not helped by the fact that it's 3AM, you haven't slept more than four hours in the last six days, and you didn't bother turning any of your lights on since you can literally see everything (even the things you don't want to). You walked right into a pipe that rested across the top of two cabinets, for one of your "projects." You spend a moment trying to rub the pain out of your face, and then lie down on the ground in order to avoid this scenario in the near future.

Uh, ok. Let’s get back to it.

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and-

TEREZI: WH3R3 H4V3 YOU B33N, 1T'S B33N T3N SW33PS!

Really?

TEREZI: NO, 1D1OT! 1 ONLY GOT TWO S3CONDS OF D3L1C1OUS, SUCCUL3NT S1L3NC3  
TEREZI: D1D YOU JUST H1T YOUR H34D ON 4 P1P3

What, no.

TEREZI: YOU SM3LL L1K3 YOU JUST H1T YOUR H34D ON 4 P1P3

I smell like that all the time.

TEREZI: OK

Anyway, that interruption sort of killed my buzz so I’m gonna ollie.

TEREZI: YOU DO TH4T

Fuck her. I'm done.

What's it like to be out there, all alone? I mean, I guess I can tap into her head whenever I want, but her character voice is so whack I'm having a hard time parsing it. Is she lonely? Probably. I wonder if-

TEREZI: SO 4R3 YOU MONOLOGU1NG 4T M3 ON PURPOS3 OR D1D YOU JUST FORG3T TO DROP TH3 C4LL >:?

Oh, shit. My b. Hanging up for real now.

So I vaguely touched on this, but the _Ascent of Mount Carmel,_ the book which contains the poem **Dark Night of the Soul,** is all about "union." The trials and tribulations of becoming one with God. The explicit, crippling loneliness of doubt, depression, apathy, and meaninglessness. A loneliness that will cause you to toss all material possessions, to throw down your relationships, to cast aside your memories, to never feel passion. When you are truly detached, apart from the world, only then will you Ascend and become one with the universe. Only then will you never feel lonely or hungry or wanting again. You will feel complete, in the meta-blob of all humanity and drowning in the sea of every soul ever touched by the hand of God.

I wonder if that's what Terezi is up to. I mean, sans the religious mumbo-jumbo, but she's got the gist of it. A spiritual quest to nowhere. A _Waiting for Godot_ type of moment. Vriska-Godot. Vodot. It's pitifully futile. I was never one for experimental theater.

So I take a little break. Take a couple days to think about it. I try not to relate too hard to her, out there all alone, a brain too big to fit on Earth C so it had to expand into the Furthest Reaches. I wonder if she can ever grow more powerful than me, driven mad by the years of emptiness, of irrelevance. I wonder if she would lose herself like _I_ lost myself. I wonder how soon it'll be until I see blue l337sp3ak sprinkled in with my own narration. I don't think I could stand _competing_ for narrative control. Fuckin’ yuck. So let's nip this thing right in the bud.

What happens when I _make_ Godot show up?  
  


Your name is TEREZI PYROPE. You continue to float through the empty reaches of space, pointlessly. It's been days, weeks, hours, minutes, seconds, since this annoying guy has bothered to invade your headspace.

TEREZI: GR34T! YOU'V3 F1N4LLY B3COM3 S3LF 4W4R3  
TEREZI: 1'M SO PROUD OF YOU, SON

Thanks, Daddy.  
I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m here to extend an offer of ““““friendship.””””  
You want any help?

TEREZI: NO

Oh great, then it’s a suicide mission.  
You're gonna die up there.

TEREZI: SUCKS TO SUCK, 1 GU3SS

Well, too bad. I’m going to find Vriska when you won’t. I’m going to reach my tender fingies into the jaws of the narrative and wrench forth the guts. And there is nothing you can do to stop me. No force on Earth or in the Furthest Ring will stop me from taking control of Vriska fucking Serket and steering her straight to you. And then what will you do? Your character arc will be completed, you will have no purpose, and you will have to return to Earth C and wander with the rest of the unenlightened damned.  
  


Your name is VRISKA SERKET-

TEREZI: W41T, DON’T DO TH1S!

-and you are currently being stretched six ways to Sunday. You look down at your hand, blood spattering onto your palm, and watch yourself extend into the horizon line. You are being sucked into the unknown, and all you can do is scream about how you want to see what happens next. But you never will.

A black hole is something not even a god tier player can survive, you suspect. And even if one could, you highly doubt there’d be any clawing your way out of its event horizon and back into relevance. Not this time. It’s a fate worse than anything you can imagine.

TEREZI: STOP! 1’M NOT JOK1NG, STR1D3R!

The shard in your chest is aching like nothing you’ve ever felt before, but you can’t focus on it. All you care about is _relevance,_ how you want to see, how you must see, how you NEED to SEEEEEEEE, and-

And as it truly sinks in—what is happening to you, how this is _ending_ for you—finally you lose all sense of composure. You flail, spin, and flip in helpless little circles like a bloody rag doll, and you begin to scream. 

Oh, look at that, she’s out of my realm of influence. Wonder where she went.

Rhetorical question, of course. She’s obviously dead and gone and will never be relevant again. I mean, if she were ever made relevant again, that would be incredibly stupid. That horizon line was clearly the be-all-end-all of canonicity and whatever’s beyond the line will _never_ matter again, I 100% guarantee it.

Sorry about not being able to save her. She was basically already doomed from the start, I couldn't have pulled her out.

TEREZI: ...  
TEREZI: HOW DO 1 KNOW YOU W3R3N’T M4K1NG TH4T WHOL3 SC3N3 UP?

I mean, there was like some trippy double narrative shit going on there. Don’t know what was up with that, I’ll figure it out later, probably. But you didn’t smell a lie in either of those passages, did you?

TEREZI: ...

So, Vriska’s dead. Gone. Whatever.  
What are you going to do now?

TEREZI: H4NG OUT UP H3R3, PROB4BLY  
TEREZI: F1GUR3 OUT WH4T TO DO N3XT

Waiting to die?

TEREZI: PUTT1NG 1T L1K3 TH4T M4K3S 1T S33M G4UCH3  
TEREZI: L3T'S JUST S4Y 1'M H4V1NG 4 LONG TH1NK 4BOUT MY L1F3 4ND CHO1C3S >:]  
TEREZI: M4YB3 1’LL S33 WH4T H4PP3NS WH3N 1 FOLLOW H3R

And with that, I feel like I should end the call, leave her to be eaten by the void of her soul, but I can't hang up. I suddenly understand why John couldn't stop texting.

TEREZI: HOW SW33T OF YOU  
TEREZI: 1T'S 4LMOST L1K3.......... YOU L1K3 M3!  
TEREZI: HOW D1SGUST1NGLY W34K OF YOU! 4ND HOW... OUT OF CH4R4CT3R  
TEREZI: 4T L34ST FOR WHO3V3R YOU 4R3 R1GHT NOW  
TEREZI: WH4T'S 4T TH3 C3NT3R OF TH4T M4Z3 OF YOURS? 4 B1G THROBB1NG BLOODPUSH3R YOU LOCK3D 4W4Y?

Nah, just a sexy minotaur.  
Come back home. At the very least we can make a stunning suicide pact.

TEREZI: DY1NG W1TH YOU 1S TH3 L4ST TH1NG 1'D 3V3R W4NT TO DO

That's not true.  
I understand you.  
And that's not because I can read your motives and character voice and every action you're doing.  
I know exactly what you're feeling, because I feel it too, TZ.

TEREZI: ...

You could say.....  
We're kin.  
No doubles.

TEREZI: M4YB3 1'LL COM3 B4CK JUST TO CHOK3 YOU TO D34TH

Asphyxiation's my kink.

TEREZI: BUT 3V3N 1F 1 W4NT3D TO, 1 C4N'T COM3 B4CK  
TEREZI: 1'M TOO F4R GON3

She, of course, means both figuratively and literally. The figurative, I can take care of. The literal? Not so much.

I end the call. I lean back in my chair, and kick my feet up over my desk. I try to think of a way I could get her back. My first thought is to make a random rocketship appear, but in order for me to make that happen it'd actually have to conceivably exist somewhere in paradox space. And I'm not sure my narrative control is to the state where I can find it out there in the void. 

I'm staring at one of the tasteful horse bondage posters on my wall, willing divine inspiration to strike, when a chat window pops up in the right eye of my shades. This is jarring for a couple reasons. 1. I turned my Pesterchum client off immediately after the game ended. 2. The text is bright green. 3. These shades aren't VR compatible. They're just plain old shades.

JADE: hi!

I immediately focus down on what Jade's up to right now. She's asleep on Rose's couch. Unless she's doing some wild, impossible dream projection, whoever's beaming chatlogs directly onto my lenses isn't this Jade. My voice-to-text feature still works, somehow.

JADE: it seems like you need some help :P  
DIRK: Stop impersonating my AR.  
JADE: but its so fun!!!  
JADE: im gonna go right ahead and teleport terezi to you! its really important that she gets back to earth in this timeline  
DIRK: How can you teleport things? Isn't the green sun gone?  
JADE: sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh  
JADE: anyway youve got ten seconds to make yourself presentable before she shows up  
DIRK: Who the *fuck* are you?  
JADE: ohhhh whats that??? ssrrzzzkkktt szzrrkkt youre breaking up......  
JADE: and poof! now your shades are boring and normal again  
JADE: bye bye! see you soon!

As “Jade” said, the shades pop back into normalcy. I barely get a chance to examine them before I smell ozone. There’s a crackle in my kitchen, like the sound of an old TV set turning on. Then the crash of someone slamming full force into my sink. All the dirty dishes I have in there, which are all the dishes I own, shatter in a symphony of breaking porcelain. I get up from my desk. Smoke starts pluming through my apartment complex, and someone’s having a veritable coughing fit because of it.

Terezi is at least put together enough to turn the jetpack off.

~~**== >**~~ (future update)


End file.
